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9 Troubleshooting How you establish the support infrastructure for your network is as important as what type of equipment you use. Unlike wired connections, problems with a wireless network are often invisible, and can require more skill and more time to diagnose and remedy. Interference, wind, and new physical obstruc- tions can cause a long-running network to fail. This chapter details a series of strategies to help you build a team that can support your network effec- tively. Building your team Every village, company or family has individuals who are intrigued by tech- nology. They are the ones found splicing the television cable, re-wiring a bro- ken television or welding a new piece to a bicycle. These people will take interest in your network and want to learn as much about it as possible. Though these people are invaluable resources, you must avoid imparting all of the specialized knowledge of wireless networking to only one person. If your only specialist loses interest or finds better paying work somewhere else, they take the knowledge with them when they go. There may also be many young and ambitious teenagers or young adults who will be interested and have the time to listen, help, and learn about the network. Again, they are very helpful and will learn quickly, but the project team must focus their attention on those who are best placed to support the network in the coming months and years. Young adults and teenagers will go off to university or find employment, especially the ambitious youth who tend to want to be involved. These youth also have little influence in the commu- nity, where an older individual is likely to be more capable of making deci- sions that positively affect the network as a whole. Even though these indi- 267 268 Chapter 9: Troubleshooting viduals might have less time to learn and might appear to be less interested, their involvement and proper education about the system can be critical. Therefore, a key strategy in building a support team is to balance and to dis- tribute the knowledge among those who are best placed to support the net- work for the long term. You should involve the youth, but do not let them capitalize use or knowledge of these systems. Find people who are commit- ted to the community, who have roots in the community, who can be moti- vated, and teach them. A complementary strategy is to compartmentalize functions and duties, and to document all methodology and procedures. In this way, people can be trained easily, and substituted with little effort. For example, in one project site the training team selected a bright young university graduate who had returned to his village. He was very motivated and learned quickly. Because he learned so quickly, he was taught more than had been foreseen, and he was able to deal with a variety of problems, from fixing a PC to